Editor's note: In 2014 Montana celebrates 150 years as a territory and 125 years as a state. We're marking both landmark birthdays each Sunday with a Montana Moment, a chronological look at key events in Montana's history.

The moment: Construction on Fort Peck Dam begins in 1933.

The story: "Now people talk about the Fort Peck Dam as the fulfillment of a dream. It is only a small percentage of the whole dream covering all of the important watersheds of the Nation. ..." Before American men and women get through with this job, we are going to make every ounce and every gallon of water that falls from the Heaven and the hills count before it makes its way down to the Gulf of Mexico." —President F.D. Roosevelt at Fort Peck, Aug. 6, 1934.

The "New Deal" programs that aimed to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression may have made their biggest mark in Montana, where one of the world's largest earth-filled dams and a 134-mile lake remains.

Construction on the Fort Peck Dam began in 1933 and finished in 1940, employing 40,000 to 50,000 workers from across the state and country.

The four-mile dam is an engineering marvel, with 125.6 million cubic yards of fill. By the time it was one-fifth of the way to completion, the dam was already the largest in the world.

A diverse mix of workers lived in 18 boomtowns around the construction site, with bars, pool halls, restaurants and bordellos.

When he spoke at the dam in 1934, Roosevelt noted the project had national implications, both for its effect on the watershed, on irrigation, on the power supply, on unemployment and in the production of materials for the dam in Pittsburgh, New York, Birmingham, Ala., and along the Pacific Coast — boosting employment across the country in the dark days of the Depression.

"It is national in scope and it was undertaken with the idea that it would benefit the whole Nation. And it is going to do it," Roosevelt said.

"That is one reason, my friends, the chief reason, that I am glad to be out in these parts today to see the work in its inception; to see the fine spirit of all the people who are engaged in the work," he said. "That is why, also, that I am very confident it is going to be carried through to the success and glory of the Nation.

Live the moment: You haven't seen Montana until you've seen Fort Peck Dam. Take a power house tour and check out the dam history (as well as natural history) at the Fort Peck Interpretive Center, and then stick around to fish, swim and boat in the Fort Peck Reservoir or see a show at the Fort Peck Theatre.